


Ick

by fleete



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alien Culture, Babies, Babysitting, Gen, Languages and Linguistics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-28
Updated: 2014-04-28
Packaged: 2018-01-21 02:25:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1534196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleete/pseuds/fleete
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Uhura’s eyes go wide and alarmed as soon as she sees him.  “Captain. You have a baby. Who gave you a baby?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ick

**Author's Note:**

> For affectingly's tumblr prompt: Star Trek, Jim Kirk has to babysit

Uhura’s eyes go wide and alarmed as soon as she sees him. “Captain. You have a baby. Who gave you a baby?”

“Her parents. The Ambassadors.” Honestly, there is no need for this level of dismay. Jim’s totally on top of this. He brandishes the arm with the baby attached to it show exactly how on top of this he is. The baby’s rock-solid grip doesn’t falter at all; she just gurgles and continues to mouth at Jim’s elbow. “Actually, I was hoping you could help me out with some language stuff. Do you think this bronze color on her cheeks means happy?”

“Why would the Ximi Ambassadors give you their baby?”

“Because they didn’t want to take her into a meeting with the Ferengi, which was a great call, I think—”

“So they _gave their baby_ to you.”

“Lieutenant, I am perfectly capable— _Ow_.” The baby decides to flex her killer climbing muscles to scramble up Jim’s bicep and settle onto his shoulder. She appropriates his ear as a handle.

Uhura is biting back a smile. “I didn’t mean to imply you weren’t capable. I’m just impressed that the Ximi trust you enough to let you babysit.”

“A victory for diplomacy,” Jim confirms, trying to keep his shoulders straight and crane his neck to look at her at the same time. “Besides, it was either me or Spock, and apparently Ximi kids need lots of skin-to-skin contact. What color is she right now?”

Uhura steps up closer and squints. “Brown and purple, with a shimmer around the throat. That’s…happy emotions, in general, but I’ve been concentrating on their spoken language instead of the color one. Even if I did, I don’t think I could parse babyspeak.”

“Well we’re all right. Aren’t we, Ick?”

His pronunciation makes Uhura laugh out loud, which was intentional. Baby Ick, Jim has quickly found, loves it when Terrans laugh. She goes all rapt and interested and yellow.

The baby doesn’t technically have a name yet, but her parents call her Ick, which they informed him is the Ximi word for “baby.” It comes out like an affectionate click when the Ximi say it, but when Jim tries it, it just sounds like “Ick.” As in “gross.”

Jim’s trying to own it. So far he’s just made clicking noises and hoped for the best. Ick seems to like it.

By the time they get her back to her parents, Ick is wrapped around Jim’s neck, trying her damnedest to turn pink.

It doesn’t really work. Her three parents, the newly instated Ximi Ambassadors, go sort of pale when they talk to him, a sign of politeness and receptivity. When they talk to Spock, they get the slightest tinge of green, and with Uhura, their naturally bronze-y faces edge closer to brown. It’s cool to watch, the way their skin and eyes shimmer, darken, and shift in hue. They only make subtle changes when they communicate with outsiders, but when the Ambassadors confer with each other, they conduct brilliant, rapid-fire exchanges of color, mirroring each other’s colors when they agree, and flashing to complementary and analogous colors when they don’t. 

Baby Ick hasn’t really picked up on the fact that Jim can’t “talk” back to her the way that she wants, so she just keeps trying. She swings around his shoulders, smacks his skin wherever she can reach it, and turns various shades of yellow, brown, and purple, growing more and more frustrated over time.

When the Ambassadors arrive back, Ick immediately vaults from Jim’s shoulders into their arms. They click soothingly at her, and the whole family swirls into a matching shade of lavender.

“She was trying to mirror you,” one of her parents explains.

Jim smiles apologetically. “I, yeah, I figured that. I’m sorry if I upset her.”

Another of the parents, this one deepening into a purple, says, “Captain. If you permit, we could show her how to produce your…” He falters, says a word in Ximi, and looks over at his partners.

“Colors-of-being,” one of them translates, and wow, Jim will have to remember that to tell Uhura.

“Yeah,” Jim says. He looks at each of them in turn, the four of them almost eerie in their sudden, rapt attention, and realizes that this might be more important than just a lesson for Ick. “Sure.” 

He holds out his wrist, intuiting that they will need to touch him, and an Ambassador steps forward, grasps his wrist, and flushes a pale, shifting peach-gold. The color is like his skin and hair and uniform all combined, and even her eyes go blue, and it is _weird_ and intense and uncanny to look her in the eye while she does this.

Ick, of course, doesn’t care that this is a major step forward in Ximi-Terran relations. She clicks joyously, her hairless skin already struggling towards yellow-gold, and when another parent holds her over Jim’s arm where it’s clasped, she pats at them eagerly until she turns an epic, glowing pink.


End file.
